Alastair Fuad-Luke

Alastair Fuad-Luke is a sustainable design facilitator, educator, writer and activist exploring emergent, hybrid design practices. His books include Agents of Alternatives (co-edited), Design Activism and The Eco-Design Handbook. He is Professor at the Faculty of Design & Art, the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. Between 2011 to 2016 he was Professor of Emerging Design Practices at Aalto ARTS, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland and a Visiting Professor at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, 2014-2016. His recent work embraced co-designing with communities in Finland, Mexico, and the UK, a European Union project on eco-innovation (SHIFT), open fashion design with Mode Uncut, and the not-for-profit organization Agents of Alternatives.

Dissonant design: positive disruptions, transitions and hope!

Design is in flux, as witnessed by a plethora of adjectives co-joined with design (co-/eco-/open/participatory/social/slow/transition/ transformation). To date, these niche modes of designing are having little impact on our dominant socio-technical landscapes and regimes as viewed from a Multi-Level Perspective. Can we adopt a more paralogical stance (after Jean François Lyotard)? Can we trigger system(ic) changes with a ‘dissonant design’ approach which fosters a healthy societal agonism and active-ism? What role might design f(r)ictions play? And, who are the ‘designers’ that might implement these positive disruptions, encourage transition and give hope?